Poppy’s Norfolk Ltd. – From Heartbreak to Heartmelting
In February 2020, Hollie Ikins once owned a successful beauty salon and training school in Norwich, where she pampered thousands of clients while training hundreds of new therapists within the industry.
And then Covid hit.
Hollie was forced to close her salon doors for 200 days and, during this time, she was homeschooling her five-year-old daughter, Poppy, which was a challenge in itself.
Hollie told us, “There is only so much maths and phonics one person can handle in a day, so we decided to start a ‘get creative’ session in our kitchen to pass some of the time. I ordered a wax melt kit on Amazon and literally just gave it a go.”
Hollie and her daughter shared their very first creation on their Facebook and the response was unexpected to say the least.
She explained, “So many people were asking if they could buy them so we decided to give our little hobby a name and see what we would make of it. We literally just named it Poppy’s after her.”
Between May to August, Hollie sold a few melts here and there to friends and family. Soon after, Hollie was given the go-ahead to reopen her businesses and so she went back to the salon.
She told us, “Business was tough. As a beauty salon, we did not offer hair services and we really found it difficult to pull the clients back in. Understandably a global pandemic had scared a lot of people into leaving their homes for things like nails and lashes, especially as they had already gone so long without them.
“For myself and the self-employed girls, this was heartbreaking, I was struggling personally as I knew how much work meant to the girls in the salon and without clients there is no work. I felt like all of my hard work was falling apart, like I was in a boat with a small hole and no paddle.”
Hollie soon came to the heartbreaking realisation that she wasn’t going to be able to make the salon work in the new premises so she relocated again. As if that wasn’t enough, four weeks later Hollie received the news that she would have to close again.
She said, “It was at this point that I decided I was going to have to do something that I would be able to continue to do from home, a way to provide for my family and afford my mortgage. It was time to take wax melts seriously.”
Hollie then created a website and Instagram page and told her husband she was going to start a home fragrance business. According to Hollie, his words were: ‘You’ll never make any money doing that’ and that was reason enough to prove him wrong in Hollie’s eyes.
And prove him wrong she did, Poppy’s Norfolk Ltd. now has over 12.5k on Instagram and are even followed by some celebrities. She’s sent products worldwide and has sold over ten thousand items to website customers since the beginning of 2021, eventually getting the opportunity to work with Gnaw Chocolate who now sell Hollie’s products directly on their website too.
After just two months, Holly was able to employ her first member of staff, which was of course one of the girls from the salon who had been struggling for so long too.
Hollie said, “I was finally in a position to be able to help someone else and that has been the best feeling.”
Poppy’s Norfolk Ltd. create beautifully hand-crafted wax melts, hand-poured candles, diffusers and floor fragrance from their wax studio based in Dereham. They have hundreds of fragrances available, which they restock every Sunday evening.
Hollie finished, “The best part is that I can now say to my husband… ‘I told you I could do it.”
To purchase yourself one of Poppy’s Norfolk Ltd’s wax melts, simply click here
To keep up-to-date with everything Hollie and her team get up to, be sure to give them a follow on Facebook (@poppysnorfolk) and Instagram (@poppysnorfolk)
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